School corporal punishment, an official punishment for misbehaviour by school students, involves striking the student a given number of times in a generally methodical and premeditated ceremony. The punishment is usually administered either across the buttocks[1] or on the hands,[2] with an implement specially kept for the purpose such as a rattan cane, wooden paddle, slipper, leather strap or wooden yardstick. Less commonly, it could also include spanking or smacking the student in a deliberate manner on a specific part of the body with the open hand, especially at the elementary school level.

Advocates of school corporal punishment argue that it provides an immediate response to indiscipline and that the student is quickly back in the classroom learning, rather than being suspended from school. Opponents argue that physical punishment is ineffective in the long term, interferes with learning, produces numerous harmful side effects, and is a form of violence that transgresses against children's rights.

In the United States and the United Kingdom, and generally in the English-speaking world, the use by schools of corporal punishment has historically been covered by the common law doctrine of in loco parentis, whereby a school has the same rights over minors as their parents.

In most places nowadays where it is allowed, corporal punishment in public schools is governed by official regulations laid down by governments or local education authorities,[3] defining such things as the implement to be used, the number of strokes that may be administered, which members of staff may carry it out, and whether parents must be informed or consulted. Depending on how narrowly the regulations are drawn and how rigorously enforced, this has the effect of making the punishment a structured ceremony that is legally defensible in a given jurisdiction and of inhibiting staff from lashing out on the spur of the moment.

The first country in the world to prohibit school corporal punishment was Poland, in 1783.[4]

Corporal punishment used to be prevalent in schools in many parts of the world, but in recent decades it has been outlawed in most of Europe and in Canada, Korea, South Africa, New Zealand and several other countries (see list of countries, below). It remains commonplace in a number of countries in Africa, south-east Asia and the Middle East (see list of countries, below). In the United States, the Supreme Court ruling in Ingraham v. Wright (1977) held that school corporal punishment does not violate the "Cruel and Unusual Punishment" clause of the federal Constitution, because that clause applies only to the prison system. The Supreme Court of the United States has not yet judged the practice under other federal law or other Constitutional clauses. Paddling continues to be used to a significant extent in a number of Southern states, though there has been a sharp decline in its incidence over the past 20 years.[citation needed]

In some Asian and African countries where it has been theoretically outlawed, it is still used in practice.

Much of the traditional culture that surrounds corporal punishment in school, at any rate in the English-speaking world, derives largely from British practice in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly as regards the caning of teenage boys.[5] There is a vast amount of literature on this, in both popular and serious culture.[6][7] Britain itself outlawed the practice in 1987 for state schools[8] and more recently for all schools.[9]

Many schools in Singapore and Malaysia use caning (for boys) as a routine official punishment for misconduct, as also some African countries. In some Middle Eastern countries whipping is used. In South Korea, male and female secondary students alike are commonly spanked in school. (See list of countries, below.)

In most of continental Europe, school corporal punishment has been banned for several decades, much longer in certain countries. As a formal deliberate ceremony, it seems to have been more common in northern/Protestant countries of Germanic culture than in southern/Catholic countries of Latin culture.[citation needed] Caning was not completely abolished until 1967 in Denmark and 1983 in Germany. (See list of countries, below.)

From the 1917 revolution onwards, corporal punishment was outlawed in Russia and the Soviet Union, because it was deemed contrary to Soviet ideology.[10] Soviet visitors to western schools would express shock at its use.[11] Other communist regimes followed suit: for instance, corporal punishment remains outlawed in present-day North Korea[12] and in mainland China.[13] Meanwhile, communists in other countries such as Britain took the lead in campaigning against school corporal punishment, which they claimed was a symptom of the decadence of capitalist education systems.[14]

Principal of John C. Calhoun Elementary in Calhoun Hills, South Carolina, David Nixon, a supporter of corporal punishment in schools, says that as soon as the student has been punished he can go back to his class and continue learning,[15] in contrast to out-of-school suspension, which removes him from the educational process[16] and gives him a free "holiday".[17]

Philip Berrigan, a Catholic priest, who taught at St. Augustine High School in New Orleans, was another supporter of corporal punishment. Berrigan said that corporal punishment saved much staff time that would otherwise have been devoted to supervising detention classes or in-school suspension, and managing the bureaucracy that goes with these punishments.[18]

The late Swiss psychologist and author Alice Miller disputed corporal punishment's educational value in a letter to First Lady Laura Bush, saying, "Spanking creates fear. In a state of fear the children's attention is totally absorbed by the strategy of surviving and is not available for absorbing positive messages about the right behavior. Thus, children don't learn from our words but rather from what we are doing to them. As they learn through imitation, they learn from us violence and hypocrisy".[19]

Opponents also argue that corporal punishment of students is less effective than positive means for managing student behaviour and does not achieve long-term compliance.[20] One 2002 comparison study of U.S. states in which school corporal punishment, or "paddling", was permitted or prohibited found that instead of predicting less delinquency and better student achievement, paddling was associated with higher dropout rates, poorer academic performance, and higher crime rates.[21] Other studies have linked corporal punishment to adverse physical, psychological and educational outcomes including, "increased aggressive and destructive behaviour, increased disruptive classroom behaviour, vandalism, poor school achievement, poor attention span, increased drop-out rate, school avoidance and school phobia, low self-esteem, anxiety, somatic complaints, depression, suicide and retaliation against teacher."[22]

The German psychologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing suggested that a tendency to sadism and masochism may develop out of the experience of children receiving corporal punishment at school.[40] This was disputed by Sigmund Freud, who argued that, where there was a sexual interest in beating or being beaten, it developed in early childhood, and rarely related to actual experiences of punishment.[41]

In Queensland (1989) [48] and South Australia, (1991)[49] corporal punishment is banned in government schools under ministerial guidelines or local educational policy, but remains lawful in private schools. In practice, very few private schools impose corporal punishment.[50]

In Western Australia, corporal punishment was formally outlawed in public schools by the Education Act 1999,[51] but was effectively abolished by Education Department policy in 1987.[52] Regulations aimed at ending corporal punishment in private schools were announced by the state Education Minister in January 2015, however it was reported at this time that only one school in the state retained the practice and hence stood to be affected by the amendment.[53]

In the Northern Territory there is currently no legal prohibition for any schools, government or private.[54] However, it is contrary to Education Department policy, and it has been asserted by a former Education Minister that it is not used in practice.[55]

Caning is commonly used by teachers as a punishment in schools.[57] Cane is applied on the students' buttocks, calves or palms of the hands in front of the class. Tramline cane marks could be left. Sit-ups with ears pulled and arms crossed, kneeling, and standing on the bench in the classroom are other forms of corporal punishments used in schools. Common reasons for punishment include talking in class, not finishing homework, mistakes made with classwork, fighting and truancy.[58][59]

In Canadian Foundation for Children, Youth and the Law v. Canada (2004) the Supreme Court outlawed school corporal punishment.[60] In public schools, the usual implement was a rubber/canvas strap applied to the hands,[61] while private schools often used a paddle or cane administered to the student's posterior.[62][63] In many parts of Canada, 'the strap' had not been used in public schools since the 1970s or even earlier: thus, it has been claimed that it had not been used in Quebec since the 1960s,[64] and in Toronto it was banned in 1971.[2] However, some schools in Alberta had been using the strap up until the ban in 2004.[65]

A 1998 study found that random physical punishment (not proper formal corporal punishment) was being used extensively by teachers in Egypt to punish behavior they regarded as unacceptable. Around 80% of the boys and 60% of the girls were punished by teachers, using their hands, sticks, straps, shoes, punches and kicks as most common methods of administration. The most common reported injuries were bumps and contusions.[69]

The systematic use of corporal punishment has been absent from French schools since the 19th century.[70] There is no explicit legal ban on it,[71] but in 2008 a teacher was fined €500 for what some people describe as slapping a student.[72][73][74]

Corporal punishment is still used in most of India. The Delhi High Court banned its use in Delhi schools in 2000. 17 out of 28 states claim to apply the ban, though enforcement is lax.[77] A number of social and cultural groups, including Shankaracharya, are campaigning against corporal punishment in India. In many states, corporal punishment is still practised within most schools.

Although legally banned in 1947, corporal punishment is still commonly found in schools in the 2010s and particularly widespread in school sports clubs. In late 1987, about 60% of junior high school teachers felt it was necessary, with 7% believing it was necessary in all conditions, 59% believing it should be applied sometimes and 32% disapproving of it in all circumstances; while at elementary (primary) schools, 2% supported it unconditionally, 47% felt it was necessary and 49% disapproved.[80] As recent as December 2012, a high school student committed suicide after having been constantly beaten by his basketball coach.[81] An education ministry survey found that more than 10,000 students received corporal punishment from more than 5,000 teachers across Japan in 2012 fiscal year alone.[82]

A picture showing the marks left on a Malaysian female student's palm after a caning

Caning is a common form of discipline in many Malaysian schools. Legally it should be applied only to male students, but the idea of making the caning of girls lawful has recently been debated. This would be applied to the palm of the hand, whereas boys are typically caned across the seat of the trousers.[83] By law in Malaysia, caning must not be done on the bare buttocks i.e. the pupil must not be instructed to drop his trousers before he is caned.

Corporal punishment in New Zealand schools was abolished in 1987, but wasn't abolished legislatively until 23 July 1990, when Section 139A of the Education Act 1989 was inserted by the Education Amendment Act 1990. Section 139A prohibits anyone employed by a school or ECE provider, or anyone supervising or controlling students on the school's behalf, from using force by way of correction or punishment towards any student at or in relation to the school or the student under their supervision or control.[85] Teachers who administer corporal punishment can be found guilty of physical assault, resulting in termination and cancellation of teacher registration, and possibly criminal charges, with a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment.[86]

As enacted, the law had a loophole: parents, provided they were not school staff, could still discipline their children on school grounds. In early 2007, a southern Auckland Christian school was found to be using this loophole to discipline students by corporal punishment, by making the student's parents administer the punishment.[87] This loophole was closed in May 2007 by the Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Act 2007, which enacted a blanket ban on parents administering corporal punishment to their children.

School corporal punishment in Pakistan is not very common in modern educational institutions although it is still used in schools across the rural parts of the country as a means of enforcing student discipline. The method has been criticised by some children's rights activists who claim that many cases of corporal punishment in schools have resulted in physical and mental abuse of schoolchildren. According to one report, corporal punishment is a key reason for school dropouts and subsequently, street children, in Pakistan; as many as 35,000 high school pupils in Pakistan are said to drop out of the education system each year because they have been punished or abused in school.[88]

In 1783, Poland became the first country in the world to prohibit corporal punishment.[4] Peter Newell assumes that perhaps the most influential writer on the subject was the English philosopher John Locke, whose Some Thoughts Concerning Education explicitly criticised the central role of corporal punishment in education. Locke's work was highly influential, and may have helped influence Polish legislators to ban corporal punishment from Poland's schools in 1783.[90]

Corporal punishment is legal in Singapore schools (for male students only), and fully encouraged by the government in order to maintain strict discipline.[91] Only a light rattan cane may be used.[92] This must be administered in a formal ceremony by the school management after due deliberation, not by classroom teachers. Most secondary schools (whether independent, autonomous or government-controlled), and also some primary schools and one or two post-secondary institutions, use caning to deal with misconduct by boys.[93] At the secondary and post-secondary level, the rattan strokes are always delivered to the student's buttocks, and never on the bare buttocks. The Ministry of Education has stipulated a maximum of six strokes per occasion. In some cases the punishment is carried out in front of the rest of the school instead of in private.

Corporal punishment used to be lawful in South Korean schools. It usually took the form of disciplining the student with a stick that is rigid and thick to be called a cane in the traditional sense. It is often applied to the student's clothed buttocks, but may also be given on the calves, the soles of the feet, or the front and back of the thighs. Government recommendations are that the stick should not be thicker than 1.5 cm (0.59 in) in diameter and that the number of strokes should not exceed 10.[95] These punishments were typically administered in a classroom or corridor with other students present. In 2010, the Seoul Metropolitan City, Gangwon Province, Gyonggi Province, North Jeolla Province councils established ordinances to prohibit corporal punishment of students in elementary, middle, and high schools.[96] This measure has brought mixed reactions.[97]

Corporal punishment at school has been prohibited in folkskolestadgan (the elementary school ordinance) since 1 January 1958. Its use by ordinary teachers in grammar schools had been outlawed in 1928.[99]

Corporal punishment in schools is illegal under the Ministry of Education Regulation on Student Punishment (2005) and the National Committee on Child Protection Regulation on Working Procedures of Child Protection Officers Involved in Promoting Behaviour of Students (2005), pursuant to article 65 of the Child Protection Act.[101]

In Ukraine, "physical or mental violence" against children is forbidden by the Constitution (Art.52.2) and the Law on Education (Art.51.1, since 1991) which states that students and other learners have the right “to the protection from any form of exploitation, physical and psychological violence, actions of pedagogical and other employees who violate the rights or humiliate their honour and dignity”.[102] Standard instructions for teachers provided by the Ministry of Science and Education state that a teacher who has used corporal punishment to a pupil (even once), shall be dismissed.

A federal law was implemented in 1998 which banned school corporal punishment. The law applied to all schools, both public and private.[103][104] Any teacher who engages in the practice would not only lose their job and teaching license, but will also face criminal prosecution for engaging in violence against minors and will also face child abuse charges.[105]

In state-run schools, and also in private schools where at least part of the funding came from government, corporal punishment was outlawed by Parliament with effect from 1987. In other private schools, it was banned in 1999 (England and Wales), 2000 (Scotland) and 2003 (Northern Ireland).[5] In 1993, the European Court of Human Rights held in Costello-Roberts v. UK that giving a seven-year-old boy three 'whacks' with a gym shoe over his trousers was not a forbidden degrading treatment.[106]

The implement used in many state and private schools in England and Wales was a flexible rattan cane, applied either to the student's hands or (especially in the case of teenage boys) to the seat of the trousers. Slippering was widely used as a less formal alternative. In a few English cities, a strap was used instead of the cane.[107]

In Scotland a leather strap, the tawse, administered to the palms of the hands, was universal in state schools,[108] but some private schools used the cane.[109]

In 1867 New Jersey became the first U.S. state to abolish corporal punishment in schools. The second was Massachusetts 104 years later in 1971. The most recent state to outlaw school corporal punishment was New Mexico in 2011.

Private schools in every state but New Jersey and Iowa are exempt from state bans and may choose to use the paddle. Here too, most of those which actually do so are to be found in Southern states. These are largely, but by no means exclusively, Christian evangelical or fundamentalist schools.[3][116][117]

Most urban public school systems, even in states where it is permitted, have abolished corporal punishment. Statistics collected by the federal government show that the use of the paddle has been declining steadily, in all states where it is used, over at least the past 20 years. The anti-spanking campaign Center for Effective Discipline, extrapolating from federal statistics, estimates that the number of students spanked or paddled in 2006 in U.S. public schools was about 223,000.[115]

Statistics show that black and Hispanic students are more likely to be paddled than white students,[115] possibly because minority-race parents are more inclined to approve of it.[118][119] However, a study in Kentucky found that minority students were disproportionately targeted by discipline policies generally, not only corporal punishment.[120]

Federal statistics consistently show that around 80% of school paddlings in the U.S. are of boys. This is most commonly thought to be because boys, more often than girls, exhibit the kinds of misbehaviour for which corporal punishment is thought appropriate.[121]

One study has alleged that students with disabilities are "subjected to corporal punishment at disproportionately high rates, approximately twice the rate of the general student population in some States".[122]

Corporal punishment in American schools is administered to the seat of the student's trousers or skirt with a specially made wooden paddle.[3] This often used to take place in the classroom or hallway, but nowadays the punishment is usually given privately in the principal's office.[3]

Most public school districts lay down detailed rules as to how the punishment is to be administered. In many cases these are published in the school's student-parent handbook.[3]

In 1983 a school administrator struggled with a student, trying to force her to bend over a chair to receive a paddling. During the struggle, the student fell against a desk, sustaining a serious injury to her back.[123]

Increasingly, corporal punishment in US schools is, either explicitly or de facto, a matter of choice for the student. Thus, the rules of the Alexander City Schools provide, "No student is required to submit to corporal punishment."[124] Many school handbooks provide that where a student refuses to submit to a paddling, he or she will receive some other punishment instead, such as suspension. Students are unlikely nowadays to be forcibly restrained while being paddled, as happened in the 1970 case which came to the Supreme Court in 1977 as Ingraham v. Wright,[125] where the Court deemed the punishment constitutionally permissible, holding that the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause of the Eighth Amendment does not apply to disciplinary corporal punishment in public schools and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is not offended by the Florida scheme.

Many school districts also offer parents an opportunity to state whether or not they wish corporal punishment to be used on their sons and daughters. Typically, the parents fill out a form which is filed in the school office. In many districts this is an "opt-out" system. In others an "opt-in" system applies, whereby no student is so punished without explicit parental consent.

A bill to end the use of corporal punishment in schools was introduced into the United States House of Representatives in June 2010 during the 111th Congress.[126][127] The bill, H.R. 5628,[128] was referred to the United States House Committee on Education and Labor where it was not brought up for a vote. As of June 2011 a similar bill has not been re-introduced in the 112th Congress. A previous bill "to deny funds to educational programs that allow corporal punishment"[129] was introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives in 1991 by Representative Major R. Owens. That bill, H.R. 1522, did not become law.

According to the Alliance Against Corporal Punishment, 72% of Americans surveyed are against corporal punishment in schools. While only 26% of Americans support school corporal punishment.[130]

Thirty-one U.S. states and the District of Columbia have banned corporal punishment from use in state schools. Two states, New Jersey and Iowa, additionally ban the use of corporal punishment in private schools. The states, along with the year they banned, are:

^Adelson, Eric (4 May 2009). "The Principal And The Paddle". Newsweek (New York). While suspensions take kids out of the classroom for days, paddling could be done in 15 minutes. "What are we here to do? Educate," Nixon says. "This way there's an immediate response, and the child is right back in the room learning."

^One Kentucky study noted, "Out-of-school suspension and expulsion interrupt students' educational progress and remove students from school at a time when they may most need stability and guidance in their lives. Repeated out-of-school suspensions may make it impossible for students to keep up with the curriculum, complete class assignments, and advance from one grade to another." Richart, David et al. "Unintended Consequences: The Impact of 'Zero Tolerance' and Other Exclusionary Policies on Kentucky Students", report prepared by the National Institute on Children, Youth & Families at Spalding University in Louisville, KY; the Children's Law Center in Covington, KY; and the Youth Law Center in Washington, D.C.

^"Sometimes we sent a student to the principal's office for a paddling, and I have seen a marvelous clearing of the air with a simple whack on the butt. The offending student realized without resorting to guilt or subterfuge, the seriousness of his transgression." Berrigan, Father Philip, quoted in Johnson, Allen Jr (31 December 2002). "The Aggressive Pacifist". Gambit (New Orleans).

^McCarthy, Carolyn (2010). Prepared remarks of United States Representative Carolyn McCarthy at the 15 April 2010 meeting of the Healthy Families and Communities Subcommittee, Committee on Education and Labor, United States House of Representatives.

^Chapman, Stephen (28 April 1994). "Singapore's Form Of Punishment Has Its Place In America". Chicago Tribune. This year, Illinois has a new law that prohibits public schools from 'slapping, paddling or prolonged maintenance of students in painful positions' or anything else causing 'bodily harm.'